Copyright and Trademark Notices

All contents of the service are Copyright © 2007 by Lutheran Social Services of the South, Inc., hereinafter referred to as LSS or Lutheran Social Services and/or its affiliates, P.O. Box 140767, Austin, TX 78714, U.S.A. All rights reserved. Copyright and other intellectual property laws and treaties protect any content provided as part of the service. We or our affiliates own the title, copyright, and other intellectual property rights in the content. LSS, LSS Disaster Response, affiliated ministries and all accompanying logos and/or other LSS products and services referenced herein may also be either trademarks or registered trademarks of LSS in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual affiliates, services and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Any rights not expressly granted herein are reserved. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy

At Lutheran Social Services of the South we recognize that privacy is important. This Policy applies to all of the products, services and web sites offered by Lutheran Social Services of the South Inc., its subsidiaries, and affiliated companies.

LSSS adheres to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), other applicable laws relating to our offered services, and good practices of discreet human dignity.

If you have any questions about this Policy, please feel free to contact us through:

Katherine Kerr
Vice President for Public Relations
Lutheran Social Services of the South, Inc.
P.O. Box 140767
Austin, TX 78714
or email kkerr@LSSS.org

LSSS's commitment to online security

Physical, electronic and managerial procedures have been employed to safeguard the security and integrity of personal information collected and stored online. All LSSS employees and contractors with access to personal information obtained on the LSSS web sites are bound to adhere to this policy as part of their contract with LSSS.

Information we collect and how we use it

Where our services do not require personal information be collected, we do not collect personal or protected data. Lutheran Social Services of the South and its affiliated ministries provide mental and physical health care services for minor children and adults, financial assistance for people in crisis, foster care and adoption placement, disaster relief, refugee relocation, education, adult day care, and a variety of other social services. To provide these services, LSSS is often required to collect personal, private, and protected health information.

Unless you otherwise consent, LSSS will only use your personal information collected online for the purpose for which it is submitted, such as to process a donation, reply to emails, and handle inquiries about particular services or to investigate complaints. Where personal information is collected on the LSSS web sites, there may be a box to indicate if you would like to be on a mailing list to receive information about LSSS services and about ways to support LSSS. At any time, you can add or remove your name from the LSSS list by contacting us at webdev@LSSS.org.

LSSS will never sell or rent your personal information.

Information you provide - When you use LSSS's services that require personal information, we ask only for the personal information required by law and best practice of the relevant industry. For certain activities, such as making donations or seeking financial assistance, we may request credit card or other financial (as appropriate) on protected servers. For health care services we may require health history or similar protected information to best support your care. For services for and relating to minor children we collect information about the minor client. We may combine the information you submit with information from other LSSS services or third parties to improve the quality of our services.

Automatic Log information - When you use the LSSS web site, our servers automatically record information that your browser sends whenever you visit a web site. These server logs may include information such as your web request, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request.

Cookies - The LSSS web site logs are enhanced by tracking "cookies." A cookie is a small amount of data that is sent to your browser from a Web server and stored on your computer's hard drive. LSSS uses cookies to provide more accurate log information, site navigation, and access to forms. These cookies do not include personally identifying, protected health, nor other confidential data. We do not, through cookies, read personal data from your machine nor anything that could be used to identify you as a person.

Manual Log information - Certain services require our staff to keep logs of communications and interactions. These logs may include information such as your request, language, location, demographics, the date and time of your request, and other information required by law, regulation, or specific program or grant.

User communications - When you send email or other communication to LSSS, we may retain those communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests and improve our services, and other purposes as required by law.

Affiliated sites - Some of our services and information collection occurs through other sites. Personal information that you provide to those sites may be sent to LSSS in order to deliver the service. We process such information in accordance with this Policy. The affiliated sites may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies.

Links - LSSS may present links in a format that enables us to keep track of whether these links have been followed.

Other agencies - This Privacy Policy applies to web sites, computer systems, and services that are owned and operated by LSSS. We do not exercise control over the agencies used by or in association with our various services. These other agencies may collect data or solicit personal information from you.

LSSS only processes personal information for the purposes of delivering its specific services and reporting as required by applicable law. In addition to the above, such purposes include (but are not limited to):

LSSS processes personal information on our servers in the United States of America in the states of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. In some cases, we process personal information on a server outside your state. We may process personal information to provide our own services. In some cases, we may process personal information on behalf of and according to the instructions of a third party, such as a grant provider or appropriate government agency.

Choices for personal information

When you are helped by a particular service that requires it, we ask you to provide personal information. If we use this information in a manner different than the purpose for which it was collected, then we will ask for your consent prior to such use.

If we propose to use personal information for any purposes other than those described in this Policy and/or in the specific service notices, we will offer you an effective way to opt out of the use of personal information for those other purposes. We will not collect or use sensitive information for purposes other than those described in this Policy and/or in the specific service notices, unless we have obtained your prior consent or are compelled by law or appropriate government regulation.

You can decline to submit personal information to any of our services, in which case LSSS may not be able to provide those services to you.

Information sharing

LSSS does not sell or rent personal information.

LSSS only shares personal information with other companies or individuals outside of LSSS in the following limited circumstances:

If LSSS becomes involved in a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale of some or all of its assets, we will provide notice before personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

We may share with third parties certain pieces of aggregated, non-personal information, such as the number of disaster victims who receive services, the number of adoptions from foster care or the number of residents in a particular program. Such information does not identify any person individually.

Please contact us at the address below for any additional questions about the management or use of personal data.

Katherine Kerr
Vice President for Public Relations
Lutheran Social Services of the South, Inc.
P.O. Box 140767
Austin, TX 78714
or email kkerr@LSSS.org

Information security

We take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of data. These include internal reviews of our data collection, storage and processing practices and security measures, as well as physical security measures to guard against unauthorized access to systems where we store personal data, and alterations to these practices to improve our protection of personal and confidential information.

We restrict access to personal information to LSSS employees, contractors and agents who need to know that information in order to operate, develop or improve our services. These individuals are bound by confidentiality obligations and may be subject to discipline, including termination and criminal prosecution, if they fail to meet these obligations.

Data integrity

LSSS processes personal information only for the purposes for which it was collected and in accordance with this Policy or any applicable service-specific need, law, or regulation. We review our data collection, storage and processing practices to ensure that we only collect, store and process the personal information needed to provide or improve our services. We take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we process is accurate, complete, and current.

Enforcement

LSSS regularly reviews its compliance with this Policy. When we receive formal written complaints at this address, it is LSSS's policy to contact the complaining user regarding his or her concerns. We cooperate with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including local data protection authorities, to resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of personal data that cannot be resolved between LSSS and an individual.

Changes to this policy

Please note that this Privacy Policy may change from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Policy without your explicit consent, and we expect most such changes will be minor.

If you have any additional questions or concerns about this Policy, please feel free to contact us at:

Katherine Kerr
Vice President for Public Relations
Lutheran Social Services of the South, Inc.
P.O. Box 140767
Austin, TX 78714
or email kkerr@LSSS.org

For a downloadable version of our HIPPA privacy policies,
please click on the links below.

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